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Wolves Have Local Howl Accents
狼语入门
"She has this thing where she goes to a movie theater, watching a horror movie and there was a wolf howling in the background.” University of Cambridge zoologist Arik Kershenbaum, talking about his collaborator Holly Root-Gutteridge, a biologist at Syracuse University. She said to herself, ‘Well, that‘s wrong. That‘s clearly a European wolf and not a North American wolf like it should be in the scene.‘"
美音[zo?ɑl?d??st] 基本解释n.动物学家美音[k??l?b??ret?] 基本解释n.协作者，合作者；通敌者当她去电影院去看一部恐怖电影的时候带着这个东西，背景音乐里出现了一声狼嚎。这是剑桥大学动物学家艾瑞克，他正在谈论自己同事奥利，锡拉丘兹大学的一位生物学家。她对自己说，嗯，这不对啊。这明明就是一只欧洲狼的叫声，不是电影场景里应该出现的北美狼啊。
Slight variations in the way we speak allow us to tell whether someone is from Boston or New York just by listening to them. The same turns out to be true for the animals known as canids, which includes wolves, dogs and coyotes. They all howl to communicate—but those howls vary. Canids can tell which howls belong to their known associates and which belong to strangers.
美音[?ve?ri:‘e???nz] 基本解释n.变化(
variation的名词复数 )；变异；变奏美音[‘k?n?d] 基本解释n.犬科动物（包括家犬、狼、狐等基本解释n.郊狼（北美洲西部原野上的小狼）(
coyote的名词复数 )；丛林狼，基本解释n.接合物(
associate的名词复数 )；朋友；大家说话方式上的细微差异，使我们可以通过听对方说话而分辨出谈话的人是来自波士顿还是纽约。同样的道理也适用于某些动物，比如犬科动物，包括狼，狗，土狼等等。它们通过嚎叫进行交流——但是这些叫声也是有区别的。犬科动物可以通过嚎叫声来分辨出哪些是同伴那些是敌人。
So Kershenbaum and Root-Gutteridge decided to categorize the howls of different canids around the world. Together with colleagues, they compiled recordings of more than 2,000 canid howls, including European wolves, Mexican wolves, arctic wolves, dingoes, coyotes, golden jackals, domestic dogs, New Guinea singing dogs, and more. A computer program sorted the howls into different types. The study was published in the journal Behavioral Processes.
n.澳洲的一种野狗(
dingo的名词复数 )
golden jackals金豺
所以Kershenbaum 和 Root-Gutteridge决定分类整理一下全世界不同犬科动物的嚎叫声音。和同事们一起努力，他们汇编了超过2000种犬科动物的嚎叫声，其中包括欧洲狼，墨西哥狼，北极狼，澳大利亚犬，美国西部小郊狼，黄金胡狼，家犬，新几内亚唱歌犬等。他们用计算机程序分选了这些嚎叫声音文件。该研究已经发表在《行为过程》杂志上。
Based on the analysis, canids use 21 different kinds of howls to communicate. If you think of the howls as words, then all canids have the same vocabulary—but each species or sub-species has its own unique dialect. Some words are more common in one dialect, while other words are more common in another dialect and so on. By matching dialect with species and geography, researchers could monitor endangered species, like red wolves, just by listening.
美音[?da???l?kt] 基本解释n.方言，土语美音[d?i?ɑɡr?fi] 基本解释n.地理（学）；地形美音[?n?dend??d] 基本解释adj.快要绝种的基于这种分析，犬科动物共使用了21种不同的嚎叫声影进行同类交流。如果你把这些嚎叫声音想象成为某种语言，那么所有的犬科动物就拥有的是同样的词汇——但是每个种或者亚种又都有各自独特的方言。一种方言中的某些词很常见，但是另一种方言中可能常见的就是另外一些词，以此类推。通过比对这些具备方言的品种和地理环境，研究人员们就可以仅仅通过监听声音，对一些濒危的品种，比如像是红狼，进行监控。
[AK:] "Being able to distinguish between the howls of a coyote and the howls of a red wolf opens the possibility for techniques of passive monitoring, passive population monitoring, using acoustics."
美音[??kust?ks] 基本解释n.声学；能够区分草原狼和红狼的嚎叫，就为过去被动的监控，被动的种群监测等技术开启了新方法，比如采用声音监控。
Meanwhile, ranchers have tried to broadcast specific howls to discourage grey wolves from feasting on their livestock, but it‘s never been successful.
基本解释n.大农场主(
rancher的名词复数 )美音[d??sk?r?d?,
-?sk?r-] 基本解释vt.使气馁；使沮丧同时，农场主们也已经开始尝试用播放特殊的嚎叫声来防止大灰狼偷吃他们的牲畜，尽管这种方法还没有试验成功。
[AK:] "Because we don‘t really know what message we‘re conveying to the wolves when we play back an arbitrary howl. For all we know, we could be playing back a howl that means come and eat, there‘s lots of interesting food over here."
美音[?ɑrb??tr?ri] 基本解释adj.随意的，任性的The research could thus finally bring peace to the conflict between ranchers and wolves, by finally speaking to the predators in their own language.
如果最后能通过和捕食者之间进行同种语言的交流，这项研究最终会因此缓和农场主和狼群之间的矛盾。
Wolves Have Local Howl Accents
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原文地址：http://blog.csdn.net/zhihuier/article/details/51200144
